Hafiz Mohammad Saeed leads prayer for executed Bangladesh Jamaat leader

LAHORE: Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed today led a funeral prayer in absentia for Jammat-e-Islami leader Abdul Quader Mollah, who was hanged in Bangladesh last week for genocide during the liberation war of 1971.

A large number of JuD activists gathered in Multan district, 350 km from Lahore, for the funeral prayer.

Saeed, founder of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, said the Pakistan government should have registered a "strong protest" with Bangladesh over the execution.

He condemned the attitude of the PML-N government at the centre for showing indifference to the victimisation of Jamaat leaders in Bangladesh.

Earlier, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, a senior leader of the ruling PML-N, had described Mollah's hanging as "very unfortunate". He contended that some circles had declared it a "judicial murder".

The 65-year-old Jamaat leader, known as the "Butcher of Mirpur" for atrocities committed in a suburb of Dhaka, was hanged after Bangladesh's Supreme Court rejected his review petition.